andes (Other Keyword)
26-50 (135 Records)
The archaeological site of Cochasquí exhibits some of Ecuador’s largest and most ornate earthen pyramids or Tolas. With long dirt ramps and truncated steps of cangahua blocks, the Cochasquí pyramids are some of the most recognizable in the country. It was at this site that the Inka first encountered and conquered one of the great polities of the Caranqui Confederation. Sometime after its conquest by the Inka, the Spanish arrive and, by all historic accounts, the location was abandoned by 1580...
Color and Q'iwa: Expecting the Unexpected in Andean Textile Design (2016)
Color is one of many key expressive modes for textiles in particular. Intense, communicative, and not always predictable, Andean textile coloration is a complex issue. Rather than submitting to a "cookbook" delineation of color symbolism (red means blood, etc.), the abstract mindset of ancient and modern Andean societies means that color has many more complex, even philosophical, roles to play in the fiber arts of this area. For instance, purposeful rupturing of regular color patterning...
Color patterns and aspects of significance in the Paracas Necropolis (2016)
Anne Paul (1998) observed that the Paracas Necropolis embroiderers seem to explore all possible color repeat patterns in their mantle design. At the same time, a few dominant color combinations recur throughout the assemblage. Like speech, color is a system of difference, hues perceived relationally through contrast with those adjacent. Dyed color is produced by chemical processes on natural fiber with pre-existing tones, and changes over time in diverse environmental conditions. These factors...
Consuming Contagion: Taki Onqoy and the Ideological Rejection of European Foodstuffs (16th-Century, Ayacucho, Peru) (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Environmental Intimacies: Political Ecologies of Colonization and Anti-Colonial Resilience", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Andean groups in the Central Highlands of Peru directly experienced colonialism through evangelization and the periodic presence of Spanish authorities rather than violent combat or direct mandates. Through the entanglement of new European foods and animals (wheat, horse, pig, and cow)...
Continuidad y cambio: un estudio comparativo e interpretativo de los espacios domésticos de Mawchu Llacta (2017)
Una de las más grandes reformas llevadas a cabo durante el Virreinato en el Perú fue la Reducción General de Indios, que consistió en el traslado y reubicación de las poblaciones indígenas. Este proceso de cambios no solo se enfocó en la generación de una nueva forma de asentamientos humanos, sino que también afectaron con toda una estructura social, que a su vez repercutió en el modo de vida y bagaje cultural materializado en la distribución, uso y representación de espacios, es este el caso de...
Conversion and Revitalization in a Taki Onqoy Center of Highland Peru (Chicha--Ayacucho) (2016)
In the first generation after the Spanish conquest of Peru, indigenous Andeans and Spaniards entered into a period of change in which daily practices, traditions, and religion were negotiated and reshaped. A local response to Spanish attempts at Christian conversion was the cultural revitalization movement of Taki Onqoy (Quechua-dancing sickness). Primary sources suggest that this movement was practiced by local Andeans and manifested through the rejection of Spanish religious beliefs in favor...
COPING WITH CONFLICT: DEFENSIVE STRATEGIES AND CHRONIC WARFARE IN THE PREHISPANIC NASCA REGION (2017)
Warfare was a significant sociopolitical practice throughout the Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450). A salient research topic within broader investigations of conflict is how populations cope with chronic warfare. This article utilizes statistical and GIS-based analyses of architectural features and settlement patterns to reconstruct defensive coping mechanisms among fortified settlements in the Southern Nasca region of Peru. Specifically, this research evaluates how...
Defining Identity during Revitalization: Taki Onqoy in the Chicha-Soras Valley (Ayacucho, Peru) (2017)
Investigations into Early Colonial Period status and identity of New World indigenous people have focused on assemblages of Spanish and indigenous goods in domestic and public contexts (Deagan 2003, Rice 2012). These studies have investigated how access to new goods and foodways may have reflected status among indigenous people, or how use of these imports in specific contexts were markers of changing identities. This paper presents excavation results at Iglesiachayoq (Ayacucho, Peru), an Inka...
Diet, Status, and Identity in Colonial Peru: Investigations at Carrizales (Zaña Valley, Peru) (2016)
Late 16th century Peru was a dynamic period associated with emerging Spanish colonial polices - forced resettlement and tribute extraction – coupled with general demographic decline. Spanish officials and indigenous communities alike had to make difficult choices on how they provided for their households and put food on the table. We examine the effects of this tumultuous period on Spanish and indigenous foodways at the reducción site of Carrizales, located in the lower Zaña Valley on the North...
Drinking power: Moche tombs as sites of subjectification (2015)
In the ethnohistoric record of the Andes, the bodies of the dead feature as key material objects through which living rulers claimed power over people and territory, especially irrigated land. This was true for the highland Inka, and also for coastal societies such as Chimu. In the archaeological record for earlier societies such as Moche, we see evidence for a similar complex of practices involving tombs, entombed bodies, and associated artifacts and offerings. These mortuary assemblages were...
Early expressions of persistent leadership and inequality in the Andean Preceramic (2016)
Research over the past few decades in the Andean world has identified a number of preludes to sociopolitical complexity, persistent leadership, and emergent inequality that involve a diversity of social and cultural forms, including the control and manipulation of ritual or religious power, the mobilization of labor to construct a variety of forms of public architecture, the display of status or prestige items, and control over access to socially valued goods. In many archaeological contexts...
The Earthly Production of Fleshy Subjects in the South-Central Andes (2015)
A specific range of human subjects, or fully socialized, moral persons- rigorously categorized according to age, sex, kinship, and so forth -are, of course, the most critical ‘things’ that any society seeks to produce. I investigate the production of prehispanic human subjects in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the South American Andes. To understand the emergence of the Middle Horizon center of Tiwanaku at around AD 500, I investigate the deployment of innovative spatial, material, and...
Elite domestic spaces and daily life in a reduccion (2017)
The archaeology of Spanish colonialism in the Andean region is coming into increasing focus with the documentation of Spanish colonial doctrinas and reducciónes, along with the excavation of religious structures, public spaces, and elite and common indigenous households. However, we still lack a clear comparative diachronic perspective of how Spanish colonialism affected the daily lives and values of indigenous Andean peoples. This paper presents the results of the 2016 excavations of three...
Entangled Encounters between the Chancay and Chaupiyunginos in the Huanangue Valley, Peru (2015)
This paper builds off of recent calls to re-evaluate Murra’s model of verticality and explores the utility of entanglement theory as an alternative way to understanding the different relationships that developed between groups living on the western slopes of the Peruvian Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (1100-1470 CE). Entanglement theory is increasingly being used in Old World archaeology to examine the complex types of interdependencies that develop between groups when exotic goods...
The Environmental Effects of Indigenous Smelting in the Southern Andes: A Look at the Source (2017)
Air pollution caused by pre-industrial metal production in the Andes has been reported by scholars using data collected from lake sediments and ice cores. An important source of this pollution, which consists primarily of lead dust, is Potosí, Bolivia, a mining center that produced large quantities of silver during the early colonial period and, perhaps, during prehispanic times as well. This paper examines the environmental effects of indigenous silver production by investigating the operation...
Ethnic Disparity and Stress in Prehispanic Peru: A contextualized analysis of Cranial Pathology and Facial Asymmetry (2015)
This study evaluates the effects of stress on a prehistoric population from the south-central highlands of Andahuaylas, Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (LIP: AD 1000 - AD 1400). This era was characterized by skyrocketing violence, resource competition, and increasing social inequality. We test the impact of these phenomena by examining cranial lesions and fluctuating facial asymmetry--both indicators of non-specific stress-- among different ethnic groups, identified by the absence,...
Evaluating the Utility of Using Stable Oxygen Isotope Analysis to Study Ancient Migration and Climate Reconstruction in the Ayacucho Basin of Peru (2016)
This study examines whether oxygen isotope analysis can be used to study ancient human migration in the central, highland Andes of Peru (Ayacucho Basin). Although strontium isotope analysis is a reliable way of exploring questions of migration, oxygen isotope analysis, which is significantly less expensive, may offer preliminary insights regarding the possible presence of migrants at a site. This approach has not yet been used in the Ayacucho Basin where the Wari empire was centered, so we...
Feasting, exchange, sociopolitical interaction: Assessing the Tiwanaku presence in the Kallawaya region (2015)
In the Tiwanaku era, the Kallawaya territory was part of a web of an inter-ecologic exchange networks that provided altiplanic polities with a myriad of resources flowing from the valleys and tropical Yunga mountains. In this context, Tiwanaku centers were important places of exchange, storage, and ritual celebrations. By looking at the botanical remains, this paper will explore the changes in feasting and consumption patterns, and the ways in which various resources were utilized in funerary...
Felines and Condors and Serpents, Oh My!: Cataloging Zoomorphic Imagery in Tiwanaku Ceramics (2017)
A regimented canon of ceramic production emerged at the site of Tiwanaku in the 5th-6th century AD, coinciding with the transformation of the site from a local ritual center to a regional political authority. The highly standardized range of forms and painted imagery it produced presents great potential for an extensive analysis of both complete and fragmented Tiwanaku-style vessels. To date, most analyses of Tiwanaku ceramic vessels have categorically centered on form in order to facilitate...
Fertility, water and rock art on the Inka imperial fringes: The valley of Mariana and Samaipata (2017)
Samaipata was one of the largest centers of the Southeastern Inka frontier. Multifunctional in nature, it was an important advance point toward the tropical lowlands. Despite the intrusions of the Guaraní-Chiriguanos, this region witnessed complex processes of settlement reorganization. This was particularly the case of the fertile valley of Mairana, an important breadbasket of this frontier outpost. Occupied by the Mojocoya and Gray Ware archaeological cultures, their inhabitants produced...
Formation and Transformation of Identities in the Andes: The Constructions of Childhood among the Tiwanaku (2016)
Despite their importance, little attention has been paid to childhood and the roles of children in the ancient Andes. Here, we focus our case study on the Tiwanaku polity of the South Central Andes, which expanded through migration and culture contact across parts of Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Argentina between ca. 500-1100AD. The way the lives of children are structured and shaped are fundamental to understanding the formation and maintenance of states and their impact on the life experiences of...
Fortified lookouts and border patrol in the Late Intermediate Period Colca Valley, Peru (2015)
During the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1450), the Colca Valley in the southern Peruvian highlands was heavily fortified. Survey of hilltop fortifications (pukaras) identified a class of large non-habitational pukaras located along the rim of the valley that were perhaps designed to monitor the vast expanses of puna surrounding the valley. Additionally, a prehispanic road which leads into the valley from the south passes through a primary defensive wall at one of the sites—further...
From foragers to producers: desert gardening at the Archaic Peruvian site of Quebrada de Burros (2015)
Research at the Peruvian site of Quedrada de Burros (Dep. of Tacna, Peru) evidenced a very early settelement of fiserhmen and shel-gatherers on the desert Pacific littoral. The campsite has been occupied during the Early and Middel Holocene, between 10'000 and 6'000BP. The analysis of organic remains indicate that since the beginning, the different groups not only relied on ocean resources but also exploiter the surrounding vegetation. In particular, phytolith analyses show that the settlers...
From herders to wage-laborers and back again: mountain mobility in the Puna of Atacama, northern Chile. (2016)
Towards the end of the 19th Century, the subsistence mode of indigenous Atacameño society transited from an agricultural-pastoral economy to a more diversified capitalist-based one. This transformation resulted from a growing mining industry in the northern region of Chile. While part of the indigenous population migrated to the new productive enclaves, others remained in their territory, especially the herders of the puna. These highlanders, however, also took part of the new capitalist order...
From the sky to the Andes: intersection between traditional survey and satellite multispectral analysis (2017)
In recent years, the use of multispectral imagery has become increasingly important in archaeological research, site detection, and classification of site functions. As the use of these images becomes more common, we must test their accuracy in order to assess their utility and potential problems with their uncritical application. In this presentation we examine the advantages and limitations of using multispectral imagery as a general survey tool. First, we use multispectral imagery from the...